Environmental Policy

The greatest threat facing the Islamic Republic of Iran today is not political, nor economic, but environmental. This report takes stock of the urgent environmental crisis, and assesses the capabilities of civil society and the Iranian authorities to develop and implement effective solutions.

Species are vanishing at such high speed that researchers are talking in terms of a sixth major mass extinction happening within human history. This introductory publication clarifies the vital development-policy significance of the discussion over biodiversity.

Just in time for the current UNFCCC COP in Morocco (7-18 November 2016), we are publishing the second edition of "Carbon Metrics". The revised edition takes last year's Paris Agreement into account and also looks at the impacts of new technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will hold its 13th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Mexico in December 2016. This briefing explains why synthetic biology is threatening all objectives of the CBD unless the parties act on five key issues.

In Paris in 2015 governments agreed to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees. The mainstream pathways pin theirhopes to risky and costly technologies. In this joint publication, together with Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) and Misereor, we present alternatives that are possible and necessary for a change of course.

The Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) region, faced with tumultuous changes in the last five years, shows a picture of shrinking spaces for civil society activism. In contrast, ecological activism is growing and connecting the fight for climate justice to other demands for community and indigenous rights, gender equality, democracy and transparency.

This report summarises the key evidence which must be considered about BECCS. It looks at the overwhelmingly destructive impacts of existing large-scale bioenergy production and use and the implications of massively scaling it up, as would be required for a global BECCS programme.

Climate change is already here. With less than 1°C of global warming, the impacts of climate change are already severe on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. The report is released by the Carbon Levy Project and outlines several cases where developing countries have suffered real loss and damage from climate change impacts.

This case study explores the controversies that arise when conservation groups or specialist companies, often supported by international agencies like the World Bank, arrive with their forest carbon pilot initiatives.

The third and updated edition of the discussion paper "Carbon Majors Funding Loss and Damage". The Climate Justice Programme and the Heinrich Böll Foundation are proposing that major fossil fuel producers ("the Carbon Majors") pay a levy based on their emissions to date and on future extraction to the International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.

Publication Series on Ecology 35: From climate change to ecosystem degradation – the solution to these problems could reside in an economic “valuation” of nature and its services. But can that really give nature any better protection? This publication provides a readily understandable introduction to the subject and illuminates the concepts and instruments that follow from the idea of monetarizing nature.

The value of nature and its “services” should not only be cherished and given greater visibility as elements of the economy, but should be assigned a monetary value in order to protect them. That is the new mantra. Although the idea is becoming more popular it is also highly contentious, argues Barbara Unmüßig.

Publication Series on Ecology 32: This paper articulates concrete proposals and puts forward ideas for devising smarter strategies that make engagement by civil society in international climate policy more effective.

Publication Series on Ecology 31: A profound flaw of our civilisation, with its multiple crises, could lie in the fact that we deny the world’s deeply creative, poetic and expressive processes, all of them constantly unfolding and bringing forth a multitude of dynamic, interacting relationships. We might have forgotten what it means to be alive.

Publication Series on Ecology 13: Climate justice requires a fair and equitable sharing of emission reduction targets as well as of financial contributions from public sources, but Copenhagen has not delivered the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that many hoped for, and the world now seems further away from it than ever.

Eni, formerly the Italian state oil company, is undertaking a new multi-billion dollar investment in Congo in developing tar sands, oil palm for food and bio-diesel and gas-fuelled electricity. The study gives background information about the plans.